Ethan longs to escape his small Southern town. He meets a mysterious new girl, Lena. Together, they uncover dark secrets about their respective families, their history and their town.

After seeing the preview for this movie, I couldn’t wait to run out and read the book. Finally a movie about witches, Oops… I mean “casters”. The trailer was so awesome I was ecstatic! Then I read the book and my excitement grew to me having ants in my pants! The book was so “eehhh”, I just knew the movie was going to be SO MUCH BETTER THAN THE BOOK!! Then I saw the movie (Crickets, Dot/Dot/Dot, and Crickets) what in the HADE’S HAPPENED? This movie had so much potential for greatness and this is what we got?!?! I could just throw a HUGE 4 year old temper tantrum!

****SPOILER ALERT**** For those who have not read the book or seen the movie and have interest in reading the book and/or seeing the movie, please stop/drop/and roll away from the computer screen. Read the book, see the movie, form your own opinion and come back to read this.

OK, first things first, let’s talk about what I liked about the movie before we get to the nitty-gritty of the “gauwd awful” that really happened: the cast was amazing! They did a wonderful job with their characters and played their parts well. You could tell they really enjoyed the script because of the chemistry on the screen between the supporting actors versus the leading actors. I would love to see the bloopers! Talk about the mad case of the giggles. Bravo!! Second, for being a “supernatural” movie the cinematography was Fan-FREAKEN-Tastic! For example, when Ethan and Lena where having a “spat”, she used her powers to only make it rain on Ethan! Buahahahahahaha what a cool thing to do!! Wouldn’t it be awesome to do that to someone?! (yes, YES it would!)

Time for the nitty-gritty!! The story line RUINED the movie! Instead of basing it off the book, it should have said “inspired” by the book. Now I know it is ALWAYS impossible to make a book into a movie, let alone a good movie (not everyone can be Peter Jackson, ya know). But that is no, and I mean NO! excuse to take a mediocre book and make a HORRIBLE MOVIE!!!!! Come on Richard LaGravenese, this movie had so much potential to actually be better than the book and you changed EVERYTHING!!! In the book Gatlin is supposed to be this last city of the old south plantations and the movie shows this rustic, hole-in-the-wall, po-dunk town. The movie left out key characters that appear in book 1 and continued through book 2-4. Because of this, there is no way you can do any follow up movies. No way to correct the mistakes made in this movie to redeem yourself.

The actors were cast based on talent alone. The way the characters are described (as in looked and acted) in the book are not the actors on the screen!! Kinda bummed about that! You spend a lot of time reading the books, and getting very close to the characters and get all excited to see them on screen and bam! a big disappointment! Not only did they leave out key characters but changed them as well? HELLO! You took Macon, who is supposed to be an incubus in the book and turned him into a Dark Caster in the movie (shut the front door!). You’re telling me that in a house that is bound to keep Dark Casters like Ridley out, it is ok for Macon! And most important: The whole book is filled with a song called Sixteen Moons. The lyrics change all through the book! It’s kinda how Ethan helps Lena figure things out. Not once did the song appear/play during the whole movie!! Richard LaGravenese, did you even bother reading the book??? Did you even talk to the authors Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl?? UUgghhh makes me so mad!! I hate to see books that have potential to be EPIC movies turn into shit!

All in all, the movie got a 1.5 star rating. The only reason it got that high was because the cast and script were superb! Other than that ……. I mean the movie is …….(throws hand in the air)… I don’t know. If you read the book, don’t see the movie. The story did not flow well and it is choppy and hard to understand. If the movie comes on TBS or TNT, change the channel and go clean the bathroom, trust me you will have more fun doing that than wasting 2 hours of your life on this.

Quote

“You want to be a normal human? What do you think that is? We don’t have powers to just change things whenever we like. Being human is feeling bad. It’s feeling pissed off. It’s feeling scared and not being able to do anything about it until you don’t feel that way anymore, until you can just see your way out of it. And I yelled at you because I care about you. That’s what normal people do when they love each other when one of them is acting like a brat. Now would you please stop raining on me.”

The earliest movie Kristina can remember watching is “The Neverending Story”. It was all downhill from there. She then watched any movie she could from old black-n-white, classic musicals to the current movies coming out. While other kids were outside playing, Kristina could be found watching movies over and over and over again, experiencing new things each time she watched them, memorizing lines and acting out the scenes. She loves everything about them from the directing, set & costume design, acting and foundtrack/film score. Her favorite genres are B-movies, British films and other foreign films.

7 responses to “[Movie Review] Beautiful Creatures”

don’t plan on seeing the movie, but I loved the trailer. Honestly, I wanted to read the book because of the movie trailer, like you did. I also love the music in the trailer. but probably won’t end up seeing this, but at least the acting was good, like you said.

I hate it when good books are being raped by the movies. I can remember the ending of John Grisham’s first book, it was totally different! Then and there I decided never to go to a movie again if I liked or had read the book. I can’t stop comparing those two.

I started this series just like you did! I saw the trailer and HAD to read the book. I was horribly disappointed! I haven’t read more than book one but I couldn’t figure out how they were going to do a second movie. If they come out with a second movie I very much doubt that I will see it. Great and very honest review. 🙂

This sounds entirely unappealing. Thanks for the heads-up! I was kind of going either way on this movie (the trailer was great but the premise…meh). I’m thinking I’ll now put it on my AVOID radar.Krista’s latest thoughts >> Promenade Around the Internets – June 2, 2013